Transformations in the Art of Love: Kmakal Practices in Hindu Tantric and Kaula Traditions Author(s): David Gordon White

Source: History of Religions, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Nov., 1998), pp. 172-198 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176673 Accessed: 27/08/2010 05:54
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David Gordon White

TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE ART OF KAMAKALA LOVE: IN HINDU PRACTICES AND KAULA TANTRIC TRADITIONS

This article focuses on the ritual "practice" of the kamakald diagram, as it appears in a number of different sectarian contexts within the "high Hindu Tantra" of the "Later Trika" and Srividya ("Auspicious Wisdom") traditions, as well as that of the earlier-as I argue-Kaula. I do this by effecting a sort of "archaeology" of the Srividya practice of the kdmakald, which I take to be the most inclusive of all the forms that practice has taken. This I do by first describing the multilayered imagery of the kamakala in Srividya practice and then by indicating the historical and sectarian sources of that imagery. I conclude by offering a number of historical and theoretical remarks regarding what I believe to have been the primal meaning of this term and the original context of its ritual practice. "Tantra" is generally used as a blanket term by Indian practitioners and nonpractitioners as well as by Western scholars to designate a body of theory and practice that has differed in important ways from the Hindu, Buddhist, or Jaina mainstream, since about the sixth century C.E. This is not how I will employ this term, however. Instead, I will take the term "Tantra" to designate the final phase of a historical "semanticization" and "cosmeticization" of an earlier body of theory and practice.1 That earlier body of theory and practice often referred to itself as the
1 See Alexis Sanderson, "Meaning in TantricRitual,"in Essais sur le rituel, vol. 3, Colloque du Centenaire de la Section des Sciences Religieuses de l'Ecole Pratiquedes Hautes Etudes, ed. Anne-Marie Blondeau and Kristofer Schipper (Louvain and Paris: Peeters, 1995), p. 79. It may be that these developments were contemporaneouswith one another, with the division between Tantraand Kaula operating on a regional level (the Kaula being based in the central Vindhya belt, with Tantrabeing concentratedin the north and south), ratherthan over time. I thank Matthew Kapstein for this insight.
? 1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/99/3802-0003$02.00

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Clan Practice (kula-dharma),Clan-Generated(kaula), or the Kaula Gnosis (kaula-jidna). The evolution of what is generally called "Tantra" was in fact a three-stage process. In the beginning was the Kula, the Clan, persons whose cremation ground-based practice centered on the "terrible" worship of Siva-Bhairava together with his consort, the Goddess (Aghoresvari, Uma, Candi, Sakti, etc.), and clans of Yoginis and/or the worship of the goddess Kali, independent of a male consort but surrounded by circles of female deities. The Kula, whose most notorious adherents were the Kapalikas, was reformed, in about the ninth century, for this reason, Matperhapsby a figure named Macchanda-Matsyendra: is taken to have of the Kaula. This been the founder syendra generally reformationinvolved the removal, on the one hand, of certain of the mortuary aspects of the Kula in favor of a greater emphasis on the erotic element of the Yogini cults and, on the other, a reconfiguration of the earlier clan system into the new Clan-Generatedsystem of the Kaula.2 Classified under the Kaula rubric are the Siddha Kaula, Yogini Kaula, and Krama cults of Kali, as well as the "Early Trika"cults of the goddesses Para, Apara, and Parapara. It is among the Kashmiri theoreticians of this last group-and here I am referring specifically to Abhinavaguptaand his disciple Ksemarajathat "Tantra" in the sense I will use it arose. Here, in the socioreligious context of eleventh-century Kashmir,these reformersof the Trika sought to win the hearts and minds of the populace by presenting a whitewashed version of Kaula theory and practice for public consumption, while continuing to observe the authentic Kaula practices in secret, among the initiated. This eleventh-century development was Tantra,3a religion of dissimulation4 and of the progressive refinement of antinomian practice into a gnoseological system grounded in the aesthetics of vision and audition. This tendency culminates in the twelfth-to-thirteenth-century Srividya. In order to avoid confusion, I will refer to these last and most sophisticated and scholasticizing developments as "high Hindu Tantra," in contradistinctionto the less refined and sublimated Kaula practices. In this perspective, I should also indicate that most of the charges leveled since the Victorian age have in fact been condemnations against "Tantra" of Kaula practice.
2 Alexis Sanderson, "Saivism and the Tantric Tradition,"in The World'sReligions, ed. Stewart Sutherlandet al. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), pp. 669-79. 3 This picture is somewhat clouded by sectarianterminology: the postreformationKrama becomes the Krama Kaula; and the postreformation Trika, the Trika Kaula. The third "tantric"Kaula clan was that of the Kaula cult of Kubjika;a new and highly semanticized form of Tantracalled itself the Srividya Kaula. 4 Summarizedin the aphorism"privatelya Sakta,outwardlya Saiva, among people a Vaisnava; bearing various outward appearances,the Kaulas spread over the earth" (Yonitantra 4.20, in J. A. Schoterman, ed. and introduction, The Yonitantra[Delhi: Manohar, 1980]).

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Within the parametersof these medieval traditions, the ultimate goal or referent of ritual practice (as opposed to the more immediate goals of tantricritual technology, which involve the pursuitof power and pleasure in the world) is to embody the divine in the world and, more specifically, within the corporate body of the tantric clan, which is reproduced within the microcosm of the yogic or subtle body of every one of its members. Both Kaula and tantric rituals enable the practitioner (generally male) to tap into the flow of divine energy that animates both the world and his clan or lineage and to channel that flow into the crucible of his own bodily microcosm. It allows him to encapsulate the divine for internaluse, to captureits boundless energy and being within a single "drop" that, absorbed into the microcosm, transforms it into a divine body. Many if not most of the sectarian differences within these allied traditions arise from the particularmeans these groups employ to signify the divine within the human microcosm. At one extreme, that of Kaula practice, the means or medium of identification is often sexual; at the other, that precisely of Srividya practice, it is throughquietistic graphic, diagrammatic,or acoustic meditation techniques that the identificationis made. Quite significantly, it is the image of a drop (bindu) that recurs, across the entire gamut of tantrictheory and practice, as that form which encapsulates the being, energy, and pure consciousness of the divine; and so it is that we encounter a multiplicity of references to drops of fluid, drops of light, drops of sound, and drops of gnosis. The theoreticians of post-tenth-centuryC.E. high Hindu Tantra(i.e., the later Trika and Srividya traditions)5were especially innovative in their integration of aesthetic and linguistic theory into their reinterpretation of earlier theory and practice. As such, the acoustic and photic registers lie at the forefront of their metaphysical systems, according to which the absolute godhead, which is effulgent pure consciousness, communicates itself to the world and especially to the human microcosm as a stream or wave of phosphorescent light and as a "garland"of the vibrating phonemes of the Sanskritlanguage. And, because the universe is brought into being by a divine outpouring of light and sound, the tantricpractitionermay returnto and identify himself with this pure consciousness by meditatively recondensing those same photons of light and phonemes of sound into their higher principles. This is, in the main, a gnoseological process, in which knowing takes primacy over doing. In fact, as Alexis Sanderson has argued, one may see in the high Hindu Tantraof the later Trika and Srividya the end of ritual: "Since [the] Impurity [that is the sole impediment to liberation] has been dematerialized, ritual must work on ignorance itself; and to do
5 For a brief history, see Alexis Sanderson, "Saivism: Trika Saivism," and "Saivism: Saivism in Kashmir,"both in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 13:15-17.

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this it must be a kind of knowing."6In these contexts, the ritual or practical component of the kamakald becomes abstractedinto a program of meditation whose goal is a nondiscursive realization of the enlightened nondual consciousness that had theretofore been one's object of knowledge. Throughthe meditative practice of mantras-phonematic, acoustic manifestations of the Absolute-and of mandalas or yantras-graphic, visual representations of the same-the consciousness of the practitioner is uplifted and transformedto gradually become God-consciousness. But what is the nature of the "practice"involved here? It is reduced to knowing as the greatest Srividya work on the kdmakald, aptly entitled Kamakala-vilasa (KKV; "The Love-Play of the Particle of Desire"),7 makes clear (verse 8): "Now this is the Vidydof Kama-kala,which deals with the sequence of the Cakras[the nine triangles of the Sricakra]of the Devi. He by whom this is known becomes liberated and Mahatripurasundari Herself." Yet, while the acoustic and the photic, phosphorescing drops of sound, lay at the forefront of post-tenth-century Hindu tantric practice, there was a substratumthat persisted from an earlier tradition (or that was borrowed from a contemporarybut peripheral tradition), a substratumthat was neither acoustic nor photic but, rather,fluid, with the fluid in question being sexual fluid. In these earlier or peripheral traditions, it was via a sexually transmittedstream or flow of sexual fluids that the practitioner tapped into the source of that stream,the male Siva, who has been representediconographically, since at least the second century B.C.E., as a phallic image, a lihgam. Siva does not, however, stand alone in this flow of sexual fluids. Here, his self-manifestation is effected through his female hypostasis, the Goddess, whose own sexual fluid carries his divine germ plasm through the lineages or transmissions of the tantric clans, clans in which human females called Yoginis, identified with the Goddess herself, play a crucial role. In the earlier Kula practice, it was via this flow of the "clan fluid" (kuladravya) through the wombs of Yoginis that the male practitionerwas empowered to returnto and identify himself with the Godhead.8It was this, I would argue, that lay at the root of what has been so universally misunderstood as "tantric sex," as well as of the original practice of the kamakald,the Art of Love. Having said
6 Sanderson, "Meaning in TantricRitual,"p. 46. 7 Kima-kald-vilasa by Punyananda-ndtha with the Commentary of Natdnanda-ndtha, 3d ed., trans. with commentary by ArthurAvalon [Sir John Woodroffe] (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1961), p. 20; the French translation is by Andr6 Padoux in Le coeur de la Yogini, avec le commentaire "Dipika" d'Amrtdnanda, Publications de l'Institutde "Yoginthrdaya" Civilisation Indienne, fascicle 63 (Paris: DeBoccard, 1994), p. 111. 8 Tantrdloka(TA) 29.124b-125a (in The Tantrdlokaof Abhinavagupta with the Commentary of Jayaratha, ed. R. C. Dwivedi and Navajivan Rastogi, 8 vols. [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987]; this is a reedition of the 1918-38 12-volume edition): tan-mukhyacakram-uktam mahesina yoginivaktram// tatraiva sampradayas-tasmat-samprapyate jfianam//. For a brief discussion, see Alexis Sanderson,"Purityand Power among the Brahmins

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this, I will nonetheless present a quite detailed account of the multileveled symbolism of the kamakald, as it is found in the primary Srividya sources, in order to demonstrate how the description itself of the diagram represents a semanticization or overcoding9 of the Kaula ritual on which it is based. Through it, I will returnto that earlier ritual.
I. SRIVIDYA PRACTICE OF THE KAMAKALA

A word on the meanings and usages of this term is in order,composed as it is of two extremely common nouns, both of which are possessed of a wide semantic field. The simplest translation of the term might well be "The Art (kala) of Love (kama)."Two other importantsenses of the term kald yield the additional meanings of "Love's Lunar Digit" or "Love's Sixteenth Portion."Commentingon Abhinavagupta's Tantrdloka, Jayaratha(flourished ca. 1225-75) refers to the kamakaldor kimatattva as the "Particle (or Essence) of Love," a gloss to which I will return.10 Nowhere in the history of these medieval traditions is the kamakald accorded greater importance than in Srividya, which, born in Kashmir in the twelfth to thirteenthcenturies, was "exported"shortly thereafterto south India, where it has remained the mainstreamform of Sakta Tantra in Tamil Nadu, down to the present time. The kamakala is of central importance to Srividya because it is this diagram that grounds and animates the Sricakraor Sriyantra,the primarydiagrammaticrepresentation of the godhead in that tradition. Thus verse 8 of the Kdmakaldvildsaof states that "the Vidya of the Kamakala... deals with Punyanandanatha the sequence of the Cakras [of the Sricakra]of the Devi."'l The Sricakra is portrayedas a "drop"(bindu) located at the center of an elaborate diagram of nine nesting and interlocking triangles (called cakras), surroundedby two circles of lotus petals, with the whole encased within the standard"shivered square"(bhupura)frame. The principal ritual act of Srividya is meditationon this cosmogram, which stands as an abstractdepiction of the interactionsof male and female forces that generate, animate, and ultimately cause to reimplode the phenomenal universe-as-consciousness. The practitioner'smeditative absorptioninto
of Kashmir,' in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, ed. Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 201-2 and notes. 9 Sanderson, "Meaning in Tantric Ritual," p. 47. Semanticization is a term that was suggested to me by Sanderson in a letter dated July 6, 1992. 10 TA 3.146a-148a, with the commentary of Jayaratha. 11KKV, 20. See Natananda-natha's p. commentary on verse 50 (Avalon, trans., p. 89): "Havingin this mannerdescribed[and]explainedthe stages of the unfoldingof the [Sri-]Cakra ..." [Cakra-krama],which is but a manifestationof Kamakala[Kama-kald-vilasana-riipa] Simultaneously, the kamakala-syllable (aksara) generates the Sricakraon an acoustic register (Yoginihrdaya in Padoux,trans.,pp. 121-22). 1.24, with the commentaryof Amrtananda,

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the heart of this diagram effects a gnoseological implosion of the manifest universe back into its nonmanifest divine source and of mundane human consciousness back into supermundaneGod-consciousness, the vanishing point at the heart of the diagram. Or, to maintain the image of the drop, as the Srividya sources do, it may be useful to think of the entire diagramwith its many "stress lines" of intersecting flows of energy and consciousness as a diffraction pattern of the wave action initiated when the energy of a single drop, falling into a square recipient of calm water, sends out a set of ripples that interfere constructively and destructively with one another. This, too, appears to be the image the Srividya theoreticians had in mind when they described the relationship of the nonmanifest male and manifest female aspects of the Godhead in terms of water and waves. In his commentary on Yoginihrdaya(YH) 1.55, the thirteenth-to-fourteenth-century Amrtananda (whose teacher, Punyanandanatha,was the author of the Kamakaldvildsa),12states that
The waves are the amassing, the multitude of the constituent parts of Kamesvara [Our Lord of Love] and Kamesvari [Our Lady of Love]. It [the heart of the Sricakra] is surrounded by these waves and ripples as they heave [together].... Here, the word "wave" [irmi] means that Paramesvara, who is light, is the ocean, and Kamesvari, who is conscious awareness, is its flowing waters, with the waves being the multitude of energies into which they [Paramesvara and Kamesvari ] amass themselves. Just as waves arise on the [surface of the] ocean and are reabsorbed into it, so too the [Sri]cakra, composed of the thirty-six tattvas ... arises from and goes [back to Paramesvara].'3 It is, then, a phosphorescing (sphurad) drop of sound (bindu) that animates this cosmogram and the universe and into which the mind of the person who meditates on it is resorbed. This drop is the point located at the center of the Sricakra, and the kamakald is a "close-up," as it were, of this drop. When one zooms in on it meditatively, one sees that it is composed of three or four elements whose interplay constitutes the first moment of the transition, within the Godhead, from pure interiority to external manifestation, from the pure light of effulgent consciousness (praksia) to conscious awareness (vimarsa). I now give an account of these constituent elements of the kdmakald and the means and ends of
12 Douglas Renfrew Brooks, Auspicious Wisdom: The Texts and Traditionsof Srividya Sakta Tantrismin South India (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1992), p. 50. 13 Commentary of Amrtanandaon YH 1.55 (Yoginihrdayamwith CommentariesDipiki of Amrtananda and Setubandha of Bhaskararaya, ed. Gopinath Kaviraja [Varanasi:SampurnanandSanskritVishvavidyalaya, 1979]). My translationsfrom this text rely in no small part on the French translation of Padoux, Coeur de la Yoginl. This passage is found in Padoux, trans., p. 153.

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meditation on them, as described in the Srividya and the broader Sakta literature. 14 Referring to the Jnandrnava Tantra, Dirk Jan Hoens translates kamakala as the "Divine Principle (kald) [manifesting itself as] Desire (kdma)." In this context, The triad of Siva-Sakti-Nada ["reverberation"is given] the name Kamakala.... Siva and Sakti are called Kamesvara and Kamesvari. The kdmakald symbolizes the creative union of the primeval parental pair; a pulsating, cosmic atom with two nuclei graphically represented by a white and red dot which automatically produce a third point of gravity. This situation is often represented in graphical form as a triangle. This can be done in two ways: with the point upwards or downwards.... A final step is taken when this triad is enriched with a fourth element so as to constitute the graphic representation of the most potent parts of Devi's mystical body (also in this context she is called Kamakala or Tripurasundari):her face, two breasts (the white and red bindus) and womb [yoni ]. They are represented by the letter I written in an older form akin to the Newari [or Brahmi] sign, or by the ha (the "womb" is often called hardhakald, "the particle consisting of half the ha," i.e. its lower part).15 In this yantra (fig. 1),16 the upturned triangle symbolizes the great tantric god Siva, and the downturned triangle his consort Sakti, "Energy." At the apex of the upturned Siva triangle we find the Sanskrit grapheme A, which is also the sun and the mouth of the maiden who is the support for this meditation. This is also termed the "medial bindu." The two bindus or points which form the visarga are the two base angles of this triangle: they are identified with fire and moon. They are also the breasts of the maiden. Located between these two and pointing downward is the apex of the downturned Sakti triangle, which is the yoni of the maiden and the locus of the grapheme HA. Taken together, Natanandanatha, the commentator of the KKV tells us, these constitute a phonematic rendering of the kdmakala since Kama is Paramasiva (whose desire to create gives rise to the universe), pure effulgence, and the first phoneme, which is A; and Kala signifies reflective consciousness and the last phoneme, which is HA.17
14KKV6-7; YH 1.24; 2.21; 3.163, with the commentaryof Amrtananda.See Gandharva Tantra30.48-64; Saktisahgama Tantra 1.3.77-79, 87-95; Jiianarnava Tantra 10.8; Parasurdma Kalpa Sutra 5.16, with the commentary of RameSvara;and VamakesvaraTantra 166. 15 SanjuktaGupta, Dirk Jan Hoens, and Teun Goudriaan,Hindu Tantrism(Leiden: Brill, 1979), pp. 95-96. Compare Padoux, trans., p. 387, n. 404, who identifies this as a Brahmi grapheme. 16 I generated this by using Adobe Photoshop 2.0. This diagramis based on Padoux'srendition in Coeur de la Yogini,p. 202, n. 99. 17 KKV, verse 25a, with the commentary of Natananda-natha,in Avalon, trans., p. 50: "In this way the united Kama and Kala (kamakalatmaka) are the (three) letters whose own form is the three Bindus." Commentary:"By Kama is meant Parama-sivawho is pure

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face sun

zkama

WA

Aire/
kala
breast

\
\HA/
i

'

a\m
kala
breast

hardhakala
FIG.1.-Kamakala according to Yoginih.rdaya 2.21

Located in the heart of the hexagon formed by the two intersecting triangles is the kundalini, the coiled serpent who here takes the form of the Sanskrit grapheme I (which, together with the bindu, becomes IM). However, IM is also the special grapheme of the supreme Srividya goddess, Tripura[-sundari]. Termed the trikhandai ("having three parts"), it is meditatively viewed as the body of the goddess, composed of head, breasts, and yoni. 18As such, it constitutes a redoubling of the symbolism of the intersecting Siva and Sakti triangles. It is in the form of the IM grapheme, then, that energy, in the coiled form of the kundalini serpent, dwells between the bindu and the visarga, that is, between the first and
Illumination and is the first letter which is A, and Kala signifies Vimarga the last of letters (Ha). See S. K. RamachandraRao, Sri Cakra, Sri Garib Dass Oriental Series, no. 87 (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1989), p. 65. 18 Guptaet al., p. 144. The trikhandais also representedby the mudrd,the symbolic hand posture adopted while meditating on Tripura:this "consists of denoting the number three by joining palms and keeping three of the five pairs of fingers in an upright position whilst bending the other two pairs" (Nityotsava, by Umanandanatha,ed. A. M. Sastri [Baroda: Gaekwad, 1923], p. 72, cited in ibid., p. 144).

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last phonemes and graphemesof the Sanskrit"garlandof letters."Lastly, the kundalini is representedin the form of the serpentine grapheme IM because it is a commonplace of the Hindu yogic traditionthat the female Sakti, which dwells in a tightly coiled form in the lower abdomen of humans, can be awakened through yogic practice to uncoil and rise upward, along the spinal column, to the cranial vault. Here then, the grapheme IM also represents a yogic process that extends from the base to the apex of the subtle body. Later commentators would find additional correspondencesto this configuration,identifying the four componentsof face, breasts,andyoni with four goddesses, four stages of speech, and four cakras within the subtle body.19 There are no less than six levels of overcoding in the tantric interpretation of this diagram, which reflect so many bipolar oppositions mediated by a third dynamic or transformativeelement. These oppositions are (1) Siva and Sakti, the male and female principles of the universe in essence and manifestation; (2) the phonemes A and HA, the primal and final utterances of the phonematic continuum that is the Sanskrit alphabet; (3) the effulgent graphemes or phot-emes representingthe phonemes A and HA, here the bindu (a single point or drop) and the visarga (a double point or drop);20(4) two subtle or yogic "drops,"the one red and female and the other white and male, which combine to form a third "great drop"; (5) male and female sexual emissions; and (6) the corporeal mouth and vulva of the maiden on whom this diagram is projected in Kaula-based practice. These bipolarities are mediated by the serpentine nexus of female energy, the kundalini, who in her yogic rise from the base to the apex of the system is described as telescoping the lower phonemes and graphemes of the Sanskrit garland of letters back into their higher evolutes, until all are absorbed in the bindu, the dimensionless point at which all manifest sound and image dissolve into silence and emptiness, in the cranial vault. Also bearing a yogic valence in this diagram and its interpretationare the elements sun, moon, and fire. Identifiedhere with the upper bindu and lower visarga, respectively, these also representthe three primarychannels of yogic energy, the right, left, and central channels. Finally, we also detect a sexual substrate to this diagram. First of all, one reading of the term kamakald is "Divine Principle [manifesting
19Ibid., p. 96, citing Raghavabhatta'scommentary on Sarada Tilaka 1.110. The four goddesses, Ambika, Vama, Jyestha, and Raudri, correspond to the muladhara, svadhisthana, hrdaya, and kantha (or mukha) cakras, respectively. See Padoux, trans. (n. 7 above), p. 123, n. 127. 20 This movement, from the one to the two, also reflects Hindu medical notions concerning lactation in pregnant women: when a woman has conceived, her uterine blood (which has only one channel of egress from the body) is transformedinto breast milk (which has two points of egress): Caraka Sarhhita6.15.17; MatrkabhedaTantra2.5-6.

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itself as] Desire."21 Second, the ritual support of this meditation is a maiden's naked body. Of course, in high Hindu Tantra, the flesh-andblood maiden substrate is done away with, with the abstract schematic visualization sufficing for the refined practitioner. Yet she remains present, just beneath the surface of her geometric and semantic abstraction, as such was effected by the later commentators of high Hindu Tantra. In a discussion of the kamakala, the Yoginihrdaya describes the two bindus that make up the corners of the base of the Siva triangle and the breasts of the maiden as red and white in color. Here, the white and red drops are "Siva and Sakti absorbed in their movement of expansion and contraction."22 Clearly, the bindus so described are not abstract points but rather subtle drops of sexual fluids, that is, male semen and female uterine blood.23 Thus, the bindu as photic grapheme (dimensionless point of light) and the bindu as acoustic phoneme (dimensionless vibration) are overcodings of the abstract red and white bindus of the subtle body physiology of yogic practice, which are in turn overcodings of concrete drops of male and female sexual fluids. These unite, in the upper bindu at the apex of the triangle, in the mouth (mukham) of the maiden, into a mahdbindu, a "great drop." We are reminded, however, that her mouth, the apex of the upturned Siva triangle, is "reflected" in her vulva, the apex of the downturned Sakti triangle.24 Furthermore, the Sanskrit term mukham, generally translated as mouth, becomes applied in these traditions to any bodily orifice, and most particularly to the male and female genital orifices. A woman's vulva is her "lower mouth." What does this do to discussions of oral transmission in the tantric traditions? Are both the oral phonemes and the textual graphemes of this image in fact sexually transmitted messages? The fact that these divine principles were transacting in something more concrete than graphemes and phonemes is made abundantly clear even in these sources. On the basis of terminology alone, we can see that
21 Its name is reflected as well in discussion of the Sricakra (Yoginihrdaya 1.54, with the commentary of Amrtananda, in Padoux, trans., p. 150), in which "the container is Kamesvara ["Our Lord of Love"]: That which he receives is the supreme effulgence named KameSvari["Our Lady of Love"]." 22 Yoginihrdaya 1.10-11, with the commentaryof Amrtananda (in Padoux,trans.,pp. 10911). See n. 7 above. For further discussion of the practice of bindu in the context of the kamakald, see Rao, pp. 65-67. 23 In spite of Sir John Woodroffe'sprotestationsto the contrary,in his introductionto the KKV (n. 7 above), p. xi. 24 Padoux, trans., Yoginahrdaya(n. 7 above), p. 202, n. 99. For a parallel discussion, also from the Srividya tradition, see Douglas Renfrew Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Sakta Tantrism(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 176-77 (in which Brooks reproduces verse 11 of the TripuraUpanisad with the commentary of Bhaskararaya).

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the conceptual matrix is sexual: "The absolute flashes forth, throbbing phosphorescently (sphuratta; ullasa). It expands as a phosphorescent
wave, a welling, a swelling (sphurad-urmi)25 ... thereby manifesting the

cosmos made up of the thirty-six metaphysical categories (tattvas), from Siva down to the element earth.... The Goddess is luminously conscious
(prakas'marsana) .... She is 'throbbing incarnate' (spandarupini), being

immersed in bliss (ananda).... The cosmos is her manifest form, but, though shining as the 'essence of divine loveplay' (divyakri.ddrasolldsa), the Absolute is pure undivided light and bliss."26 In spite of the fact that many of them were apparentlyin deep denial of it, the subliminal sexual referents of this abstract image of the "Art of Love" were not entirely lost on the Srividya theoreticians. That they were aware of such is made clear from a debate that raged within the school concerning the relative legitimacy of conventional (samaya) meditation on the kdmakaldas opposed to the Kaula form of the same. It is in this latter (and earlier) case that a maiden's naked body is used as the A number of Srividya comsubstrate for meditation on this diagram.27 the led mentators, by highly reputed Bhaskararaya (seventeenth cenon literal use of this meditation support,together have insisted the tury) with the practice of the five makaras, all of which smack of Kaula ritual.28 The names Kamesvara and Kamesvari are identified, in the prefourteenth-century Kalika Purana, with the sdkta pitha of Kamakhya,

whose sexual associations are legion in tantric tradition.29In addition, the worship of the sixteen Nitya goddesses who constitute the Goddess's retinue, and which Srividya tradition identifies with the sixteen lunar tithis,30 includes offerings of meat and alcohol. So, too, do offerings made to the Goddess and Siva, for persons whose goal is the attainment
of siddhis.31

25 Both members of this Sanskrit compound have their English cognates: sphurad is the cognate of pho-sphoresc-ing, and urmi of welling or swell. The term sphuradurmiis found in YH 1.55. 26 Padoux, English introduction to Yoginihrdaya,p. 15. I have emended Padoux'sprose to render a more literalist reading of certain Sanskrit terms. 27 Rao (n. 17 above), pp. 68-69. 28 Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities, p. 82, referring to TripuraUpanisad 11-12, with the commentary of Bhaskararaya. 29 Agehananda Bharati, The TantricTradition(New York:Samuel Weiser, 1975), p. 89. 30 YH3.165-68, with the commentaryof Amrtananda,in Padoux, trans. (n. 7 above), pp. 372-74; KKV 17, with the commentary of Natanandanatha,in Avalon, trans., pp. 33-34; Brooks, Auspicious Wisdom,p. 127; and Rao, p. 69. 31 YH 3.156-58, on the four Yoginis of the Sarvasiddhimayacakra (in Padoux, trans., p. 367); YH 3.190, 196, 199 on makara offerings to the Goddess and Siva and their transformation into nectar (in ibid., pp. 392, 396, 398); and YH3.203 on the knower of this practice becoming dear to the Yoginis (ibid., p. 401).

History of Religions
II. THE Kama-tattva IN THE LATER TRIKA

183

No discussion of high Hindu Tantracan be complete without mention of the tenth-to-eleventh-century polymath Abhinavagupta, whose unique marriageof aesthetic theory and nondualist metaphysics set the standard and the tone for much of what followed in the history of Hindu Tantra. The hallmarkof Abhinavagupta's synthesis, which emphasizedthe "soundis of its appropriationof the system of the Sanskrit shape language," a means to as "semanticizing" most of the externals (includphonemes of tantric sexual) theory and practice, that is, to internalizing ritual ing acts into subtle speech acts. Of course, when the ritual acts in question are of a sexual order, Abhinavagupta'sdiscussions often become quite tortured, as in the case of his discussion of the malini-the (goddess identified with the) energy of intermediate speech (madhyama vac) in the form of the garland of letters-whom he qualifies as bhinnayoni, "she whose vulva is split, open."32I will return to the matter of how a goddess could have been conceived of issuing phonemes from her open vulva; here, however, I turnto the Trikause of the term kamakald(or kaIts description is matattva) as it appears in the TA and its commentary.33 embedded in a discussion of the visarga, already mentioned, the surd phoneme represented by two bindus in the Srividya kamakali diagram. Abhinavagupta states: "Therefore, the venerable Kulaguhvara ["Cave of the Clan"] states that 'this visarga, which consists of the unvoiced [avyakta] ha particle [kald],34is known as the Essence of Desire [kamatattva."' Still quoting this lost source, he continues: "The unvoiced syllable which, lodged in the throat of a beautiful woman, [arises] in the form of an unintentional sound, without forethoughtor concentration [on her part]-[the practitioner] entirely directing his mind there [on that sound], brings the entire world under his control."35 Here, Abhinavagupta'sbridge, between external ritual (if not sexual) practice and internalized speech acts, is the sounds a woman makes It while enjoying sexual intercourse-a barely articulated"ha, ha, ha."36 is this particle of speech (kald) that is the essence of desire or love: in other words, the "ha" sound of the visarga is the semanticization of sex
32 Andre Padoux, Vac: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras, trans. Jacques Gontier (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1990), p. 322, citing ParatrimSikavivarana, ed. M. K. Sastri (Srinagar:Research Department, 1918), pp. 121, 151, and 155. 33 TA 3.146a-148a. 34 Glossed by Jayaratha(n. 8 above), 2:499-500, as the "quarterportion of the phoneme ha." 35 ata eva / kamatattvamitisrimatkulaguhvara visargo 'yamavyaktahakalatmakah ucyate // tattadaksaramavyaktakantakanthe vyavasthitam / dhvanirupamanicchamtu dhyanadharanavarjitam// tatra cittam samadhaya vasayedyugapajjagat/. 36 See Jayaratha'scommentary, 2:503.

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Art of Love

in Abhinavagupta'ssystem. As in the case of Srividya, the "practice"of the kdmakala is reduced to meditative concentration, this time on a syllable. Ritual doing has been reduced, once again, to a nondiscursive form of knowing. However, the presence of a sexual signifier again orients us in the direction of a Kaula ritual substratumthat involved ritualpractices of a sexual order.
III. THE KAMAKALA YANTRA IN THE Silpa Prakasa

The Silpa Prakasa (SP) is a ninth-to-twelfth-centurywork on temple architecture signed by an author named Ramacandra Kulacara, a name that, together with the title of his work, tells us much about his sectarian orientations. Ramacandrawas a native of Orissa, and to all appearances, his work is nothing less than an architect/builder'smanual for the sorts of temple constructions that we most readily identify with the medieval Orissi style: the older temples of Bhubanesvaraand its environs, temples renowned for their beauty but also for the proliferation of erotic sculptures on their walls.37 In Ramacandra'stext, the most powerful and comprehensive extant work on tantrictemple architecture,we find a numberof departuresfrom "classical" silpa sastra traditions.Most importantfor our concerns is the construction, consecration, and depositing of variousyantras in the foundations and below various parts of temples as well as beneath or behind their sculpted images. Especially distinctive are the installation of two particularyantras. The first of these, the Yogini yantra, is to be installed beneath the inner sanctum, the garbhagrha (1.90-16);38 the second, the Kamakalayantra, is the most pivotal decoration of the entire temple vimana's outer walls, from which are generated all of the vimdna'serotic sculptures (ktma-bandha), in accordance with Kaula rites.39This is of a piece with the author's overarching method, which requires that all images of divinities that adornthe temple be composed on yantras (blueprints, models) and visualized by the sculptors through meditation on them.40 The Yogini yantra rather resembles the Kamakala diagram of Srividya tradition, discussed above: it is composed for the most part of
37 Silpa Prakasa: Medieval Orissan Sanskrit Texton TempleArchitecture by Ramacandra Kulacara, trans. and annotatedby Alice Boner and Sadasiva Rath Sarma(Leiden: Brill, 1966), p. vii. Boner singles out the Varahi Temple of Caurasi, near Kakatpur,which is of the Vadabhi type, to be a perfect example of a temple built according to the specifications of this work (ibid., p. xix). There is an "oral tradition"among historians of South Asian art that Boner and Sarma's source was in fact a "pastiche" of medieval manuscriptsand that there was no single manuscript entitled Silpa Prakdsa. Nonetheless, such specialists of Orissan and tantric art as Thomas Donaldson and Devananga Desai continue to accept the authenticity of this source in their writings. 38 Boner, introduction in ibid., p. viii. 39 Ibid., pp. xi-xii. 40 Ibid., p. xv.

History of Religions Nirbhara

185 Rahasyaka Vijaya / / i\ /tyaklinna Bher\unda

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1-.-_ XW_ r

II
Il

Tripura- Kamaka le4vari \sundari ma bindb \

I-Y

Tvarita

Kulasundari VajreSvari

Vahnivasini /

KI1a- ' JvalaI: tP mali/ni pataka IV ! / ivadutika

ilupa
... -&

Mahavajrervari
II

rudlgzn

I.

..

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II

fI fiI I rlr;rnsevir

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Sampradaya Kamakala Yantraaccording to Silpa Prakasa 2.508-29

FIG.2.-The

intersecting upturned and downturned triangles. Unlike the Kamakala, however, this diagram is devoid of any geometrical representation of Siva. All of the energies depicted on it are feminine: "There are sixteen Matrkas resting on the Yogini-bindus, on every bindu there are four Yoginis in regular order."41In addition to the sixty-four Yoginis so depicted, the diagram is also said to represent the interaction of the three gunas: sattvd, rajas, and tamas. As for the Kamakala Yantra itself (fig. 2),42 it consists of a standing (i.e., erect) lifigam in its chasing (liiiga-pitham) with sixteen triangles grouped in geometric fashion around it, nearly all of them contiguous with the lifigam. Above the liiigam is a small egg-shaped drop, called the "drop of love" (kama-bindu). The lifigam is Siva, the triangles that converge on it are explicitly identified as vulvas (bhagas), and it is "only by joining the lines to the bindu that the kalis [i.e., the triangles, which represent feminine energy] are formed." These "energy-triangles," called the kald-saktis, bear the names of sixteen different goddesses, while "in the place of the egg at the center is the supreme Sakti called Mahakamakalesvari" (SP 2.508-29). These interlocking triangles combine to
41 SP 1.99.
42 I generated this using Adobe Photoshop 2.0. This diagram is based on Boner and Sarma'srendering in Silpa Prakasa, p. 104.

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Art of Love

form a square, on the perimeter of which are located the eight protective Yoginis, called the Yoginis of the bahyavarana, the outer entourage (SP 2.526b-528). This yantra, which was to be concealed by a love scene carved over it, was compulsory on temples dedicated to Siva or Rudra. Radiating outward (at least conceptually) from this yantra were the erotic sculptures of the kama-bandha which, in the case of the Varahi temple at Caurasi, depicted the eight-stage process of the powerful and dangerous Kaula rite known as asta-kamakala-prayoga, the "practice of the eight types of kamakala," about which more shortly.43 It is the names of the sixteen kala-saktis who converge on the center of this Kaula version of the Kamakala yantra that serve as the most obvious bridge between this and the Srividya version of the same, given that these sixteen names-some of which are quite evocative (Bhagamalini, identical to those of the sixteen Nitya goddesses of Nityaklinna)-are In tradition.44 Srividya Srividya sources, these sixteen form the immediate entourage (avarana) of the Goddess, to whom sacrifices are to be offered, either in the central triangle or between the sixteen-petaled lotus and the square of the Sricakra. In the KKV, they are identified with the limbs of the Goddess.45 The sole variation between the two lists lies in the name of the first Sakti: she is Kamesvari in Srividya sources and Kame'i in the Kaula diagram.46 The Silpa Prakdsa discussion of the Kamakala Yantra occurs in the context of Ramacandra's long general description of the construction of the Vimanamalini temple type.47 The jdagha wall which supports the roof of such a temple is subdivided into a number of horizontal sections,48 of which one is the kama-bandha, the place for the insertion of love scenes.49 The SP explains the rationale for such sculpted scenes: Desire [kama] is the root of the universe. From desire all beings are born.... Without Siva and Sakti creation would be nothing but imagination. Without the action of Kama there would be no birth or death. Siva himself is visibly manifested as a great phallus [mahalihgam], and Sakti in the form of a vulva [bhaga]. By their union the whole universe comes into being. This is called the
43 Ibid., pp. liv-lv. On the Varahi temple, see n. 37 above. 44 KKV,verses 15-17, in Avalon, trans. (n. 7 above), p. 33. Bhagamilini is called Bhagamalika in the SP 2.517. 45 "When the Sakti, this all-excelling great Queen changes into the form of the [Sri]cakra, then the limbs of her body change into her avarana devatas" (KKV,verse 36, in Avalon, trans., p. 70). 46 YH 3.165-68, with the commentary of Amrtananda,in Padoux, trans. (n. 7 above), pp. 373-74. See SP 2.517. 47 This is a temple whose roof consists of a garland of spires (vimanikas). 48 The jahgha is a "pilaster-likeprojecting wall-element between two chamfers, reaching from the pancakarma to the upper bandhana" (Boner and Sarma, trans., p. 147). 49 SP 2.432.

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187

work of desire. The science of kamakala is an extensive subject in the Agamas. A place without love images [kamakala] is known as a "place to be shunned." In the opinion of the Kaulacaras it is always a base, forsaken place, resembling a dark abyss, which is shunned like the den of Death. Without offering worship to the kdmakald-yantra,the Sakti worship and the practice [sadhand] become as useless as the bath of an elephant. The shrine on which that yantra stands is a vira-mandira [a temple where advanced Kaulas, "virile heroes", (viras) practice their faith].50 Then follows the description of the Kamakala yantra, which I have already outlined above. This description is followed by the following theoretical observations: These are the sixteen Saktis, all being the very essence of Desire [kdmakalatmika] placed inside the square field.5 ... In the "jewel-area"[manidesa] below [the central Sakti, Mahakamakalesvari] there is Siva Kamakalesvara... always in union with Kamakalesvari, established in the ajna cakra, always delighting in drinking female discharge [rajapana].52Whose sign is the ascetic's garb, the Yogi Kamakalesvara, the Sanikaraof dark colour is the Lord of the Kamakala Mahayantra.... This yantra is utterly secret, it should not be shown to everyone. For this reason a love scene [mithuna-mirti] has to be carved on the lines of the yantra.... In the opinion of Kaulacarasit should be made on the lovely jdigha in the upper part of the wall. The kamabandhais placed there to give delight to people [see fig. 3].53 The early tenth-century Sakta temple of Varahi at Caurasi in Orissa has been identified by art historians as the epitome of the temple style illustrated in the Silpa Prakasa,54 and it is on its kamabandha that we find what I would argue is a depiction of the original practice of the Kamakala. First of all, the placement of these erotic images is telling: they replace the dvarana-devatas standard on Saiva temples (recall here that these are identified as the limbs of the Goddess in the KKV).55 More
50 SP 2.498-505. 51 SP 2.526. Compare KJhN 14.94 (Kaulajinnanirnaya and Some Minor Texts of the School of Matsyendra, ed. P. C. Bagchi [Calcutta:Metropolitan, 1935]). See n. 60 below. 52 SP 2.534. Quotes from the MahisamardiniStotra and the Kaulaciiddmaniindicate that this practice becomes sublimated into the yogic technique of khecari mudra, in which the practitionerinternally consumes the nectar produced throughhis yogic practice (Boner and Sarma, trans. [n. 37 above], pp. 136-37). 53 SP 2.535, 538-39. Devangana Desai (The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho [Mumbai: Franco-IndianResearch Pvt. Ltd., 1996], p. 196) has suggested that the famous erotic menage a quatre sculpted into the jahgha of the ca. 1000 C.E. KandariyaMahadeva temple at Khajurahois just such a love scene, as well as a case of "architecturalpunning."Figure 3 is reproducedfrom her image of the same (p. 195) with the SP kamakalasuperimposedon it. 54 Boner and Sarma, trans., p. xix. 55 Thomas E. Donaldson, "Erotic Rituals on Orissan Temples,"East and West 36, nos. 1-3 (Rome) (September 1986): 156. See n. 43 above.

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Art of Love

FIG.3.-Jnigha of the ca. 1000 C.E. Kandariya Mahadeva temple at Khajuraho with the Silpa Prakasa kdmakald superimposed on it. The image is found in Devananga Desai, The Religious Imagery of Khlajuraho(Mumbai: Franco-IndianResearch Pvt. Ltd., 1996), p. 195.

importantis the content of these sculptures, which J. N. Banerjea tentatively identified, on the basis of an unpublishedmanuscriptof the Kaulaciu.dimanti("Crest-Jewelof the Kaula")as illustrationsof the "practiceof
the eight types of kadakala" (astkaakmakalprayoga). In the first three of

these scenes, beginning on the southern facade of the Varahi temple,

the Vira "Kaula Sadhaka"and the Kumari "his Sakti or Uttara Sadhika" are depicted standing side by side in suggestive poses and represent 1) vasikarana, "bringing the Kumari under control"; 2) sanmmoha "enchanting her"; and 3) dkar.sanaand ucciitana "attractingand preparing her for ritual sex." ... In the next two scenes are 4) yoni-dbhiseka ["anointing of the vulva"] and 5) purasca-

History of Religions

189

rana"thepreliminary interprets stageof the act.". . . Scene6), whichBanerjea as rajapdna ... actuallydepictsfellatio.The last two scenespossiblyrepresent
the final stages, 7) prastava and 8) nivrtti with the Vira and the Kumarireturning

to the normalstateafterthe sexual act.56 Similar sequences are found on the Khiching and Ganeswarpurtemples from the same period and region of Orissa.57It is the sixth stage of the rite, rajapdna, the drinking of female discharge,58that I wish to concentrate on here. While it is "substituted"on the Varahi temple with a depiction of fellatio, it is faithfully portrayed on no less than a dozen Orissan temples of the ninth to twelfth centuries c.E., as well as on temples from south and north India, between the seventh and eighteenth centuries C.E.59 What was it about rajapana, the climax and seemingly the raison d'etre of the Kaula kamakaldpractice, that made it meaningful to its practitioners?Having been trained in the history of religions, I find it impossible to accept the notion that people perform religious acts that are meaningless to them. So what then did this sexual practice mean to its practitioners?In what way does practice relate to precept, and precept to overcoming the human condition, that goal which seems to constitute the motor of every religious system?
IV. THE KAMAKALA IN THE EARLY KAULA

It is this Kaula practice of rajapana that renders the term kdmakald meaningful in an obvious and direct way, in contradistinction to its semanticized and bowdlerized uses in the Trika and Srividya systems. The name "Arts of Love" or "Love's Lunar Portion,"intimately associated with goddesses named Our Lady of Love, She Who Is Garlandedby the Vulva (Bhagamalini), and She Who Is Always Wet (Nityaklinna) and described in terminology that consistently borders on the orgasmic only makes sense in the sexual context provided by the Kaula practices portrayed on Orissan and other medieval Indian temples. Drinking female discharge is not, however, highly arousing-and it certainly has nothing to do with the TantricSex trade currentlybooming on the Internet and in California. What then can or could have been meaningful about the male consumption of female discharge, and what connection
56 Ibid., 156, p. citing J. N. Banerjea, "The Varahi Temple at Chaurashi,"in Dr. Mirashi Felicitation Volume,ed. G. T. Deshpande et al. (Nagpur: Vidarbha, 1965), p. 352. 57 Donaldson, 157. p. 58 Not to be identified with menstrualblood: it is either endocrinal fluid (MirandaShaw's terminology), cataminal fluid (in Donaldson's terminology; see Donaldson, p. 156), or postpartumlochial discharge (facsimile communication from Wolfgang Jochle, Denville, N.J., August 17, 1997). 59 See Donaldson; and Ajit Mookerjee, Kali: The Feminine Force (New York: Destiny Books, 1988), pp. 30, 42.

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could such possibly have to the multiple layers of meaning detected in the Srividya interpretationsof the kamakala as ground for the Sricakra? The semihistorical figure to whom many of the great writers of later high Hindu Tantrarefer as the founding guru of the Kaula was Matsyendra, who was the author of a seminal work on Kaulism, the ninth-totenth-centuryKaulajidnanirnaya (KJnN). His use of the term kamakala is therefore very important,inasmuch as it may be the earliest use of the term in the Kaula context. He mentions the term but twice, relating it to a body of yogic practice and identifying it with the nectar of immortality as well as with the "good stuff" or "real thing" (sadbhdva) emitted by clan goddesses whom the practitionerhas brought under his control and caused to become sexually agitated.6 The connection between yogic practice, the cranial vault, the production of nectar that is the root of immortality, and the sexual agitation of circles of goddesses brings us back to a cryptic portion of the passage, already mentioned, from the Silpa Prakasa (2.534): "In the 'jewel-area'... is Siva Kamakalesvara... always in union with Kamakalesvari, established in the djna cakra, always delighting in drinking female discharge (rajapana)."The djii cakra, the sixth of the yogic centers, is located precisely in the cranial region, behind the eyebrows, which is where the nectar of immortality is produced internally through yogic practice. This nectar, termed "female discharge" in the Silpa Prakasa, is said to be synonymous with [kaula]sadbhdva in the KJnN; in this and other sources, the term kaulasadbhava is identified with the kuladravya or kulamrta that flows through the wombs of the Yoginis, Goddesses, and other female beings with which the clan identifies itself. The arising of these female deities, and their excitation in the cranial vault throughthe nectar they drinkthere is of a piece with early accounts of the yogic process, in which it is circles of goddesses, rather than lotuses or wheels, that form the six or nine energy centers of the subtle body: this is in fact the original sense of the term cakra in subtle body mapping.61 In these early systems, these goddesses, gratified by the bodily fluids offered to them internally by the practitioner,rise along his spinal column to converge in his cranial vault. In these passages, we are in the presence of an early account of the practice of khecari mudrd,
60 KJnN 7.32ab: yuktam kamakaladevyah cakradi devesi brahmarandhravaSanugam/ devi palitastambhanam yavac saktyacarena param//;KJnN 14.92b-94b: pancadvadagantam bhedayet// devya bhutva ca yoginya matrcakravasanuga/liyante khecaricakreksobhayet rn u amrtenavina devi amaratvamkathampriye/ amrtamkaulasadbhavam paramamrtaml/ kamakalatmakam//.See n. 51 above. 61 For example, in Kubjikamata23.133-44 (in KubjikamataTantra,KulalikamnayaVersion, ed. Teun Goudriaanand Jan A. Schoterman[Leiden: Brill, 1988]). For discussion, see Dorothea Heilijgers-Seelen, The System of Five Cakras in the Kubjikamatatantra14-15 (Leiden: Brill, 1996).

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through which the practitioner internally drinks the nectar raised and refined through his hathayogic practice, thereby rendering himself immortal. These being early Kaula sources, however, the sexual valence is still explicit: it is the sexual fluids of female deities that are being generated and swallowed in the ajii cakra. This reading is further supported by the use of the term "jewel area" (manidesa) in this passage. Just as in the case of the tantric Buddhist expression "the jewel in the heart of the lotus," here as well the jewel area refers first and foremost to the clitoris, the egg-shaped drop or point of love (kama-bindu)located just above the lihga-pitham, and that place at which Siva drinks feminine discharge. Now, the technical sense of the term liiga-pitham is the "seat" or "chasing" of the siva-litigam, as such is found in Siva temples, and that chasing is nothing other than the goddess's vulva, her yoni in which the linigamis engaged. Therefore, what the text is saying here is that Siva is drinking feminine discharge from the clitoris and vulva of the goddess. He is moreover said to be in union with the goddess in the djn~ cakra, which is located directly behind the place of the third eye. But the third eye is itself an emblem of the female vulva on the forehead of the male Siva. In another chapter of the KJnN, we read a statement to the effect that "the secret field of action of the Siddh[a]s consists of five streams."62 This term, the Five Streams or Currents(pancasrotas) is in fact the earliest term that we find in the Saivagamas, the literatureof the old Saiva orthodoxy, for the lines of transmission of that tradition'steachings.63In these early sources, the five streams or currentsare said to flow from the five mouths of the god Siva.64Later, Kaula traditionswould posit a sixth mouth, called the "lower mouth"or "mouth of the Yogini," the source of its teachings and clan lineages, from which a sixth current streamed.65 I have already alluded to the important notion that the mouth-and particularlythe lower mouth-of the tantricYogini was not her oral cavity but, rather,her vulva. The use of a term which connotes fluid transfer (srotas) further confirms a hypothesis that in the early tantric context, oral transmission was an affair of sexually transmitted messages. This reading is furthersupportedby the iconographyof Siva. Quite frequently, the lifigam will be representedwith a face of Siva superimposed on the
KJhN 16.10ab: paicasrotatmakam caiva gopitam siddhigocaram//. 63 Teun Goudriaanand SanjuktaGupta, Hindu Tantricand Sdkta Literature(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981), pp. 10, 16. 64 Sadyojata, Vamadeva, Aghora, Tatpurusa,and Isana. For a discussion, see Mark S. G. Dyczkowski, The Canon of the Saivagama and the Kubjika Tantrasof the WesternKaula Tradition(Albany, N.Y., SUNY Press, 1988), pp. 123-25. 65 Ibid., p. 64, and nn. 54-57 on pp. 168-69, citing the TA, Satsdhasrasarhhitd,Brahmayamala Tantra, Jayadrathayamala Tantra, and other sources. Compare Kubjikamata 3.7-10.
62

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phallic image, in which case it is called an ekamukhi lihgam, a onemouthed or one-faced image. Not infrequently,five faces of Siva will be superimposed, with four facing in the four cardinal directions and the fifth facing upward. This is a paicamukhi lihgam, a five-faced or fivemouthed image. The Siva lifigam is always set in a pitha-having the form of a stylized vulva: this would be the lower mouth of the Yogini, from which the sixth stream flows forth. What flows forth is at once the germ plasm of the old tantricclan lineages (kulas) and the esoteric teachings of these clans: these are the sources of the tantricflow charts, which simultaneously constitute a flow of information, of sexually transmitted messages. This emphasis, on a concrete substance as substrate for the transmission of secret gnosis, is also one borrowed from the old Saiva orthodoxy. In both orthodox Saiva Siddhantaand heterodox Kula epistemology, knowledge (bodha) and liberation are said to be produced from substances (dravyas).66Mantrasare secondary. I believe that it is this contribution,on the part of the Yogini Kaulafounded by Matsyendra whom tradition says was himself initiated by the Yoginis of Kamarupa-that marks the watershed between the earlier Kula and later Kaula in the history of medieval Hinduism: by virtue of their femininity and specifically their sexual fluids,67the Yoginis were natural conduits for something that was missing or lost from the earlier male-specific Kula gnosis, and it was through them that the Kula became transformedinto the gnosis that is the subject of the Kaula-jndnanirnaya, the "Bringing Forth of the Kaula Gnosis."
V. SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED MESSAGES

the sexual references Now, in the high Hindu Tantraof the Yoginlhrdaya, are sublimated in a number of ways. We have already seen that the acoustic and the photic, the phonemic and the graphic, are emphasized over the fluid and the sexual, even as they are clearly groundedin a sexually fluid substrate. In addition, these late tantric traditions stress the transmission of the tantric gnosis by word of mouth, "from ear to ear"in the Sanskrit parlance, "according to the succession of deities, Siddhas,
66 David Lorenzen, Kapalikas and Kalamukhas:TwoLost Saiva Sects (Delhi: Thomson, 1972), pp. 68, 89, 91; and Sanderson, "Meaning in TantricRitual" (n. 1 above), p. 39. 67 This notion is broached in the Kama Siitra of Vatsyayana: "The fall of the semen of the man takes place only at the end of coition, while the semen of the woman falls continually" (Kama Shastra: Quintessence of India's Classics on Sex, no editor [Delhi: Kayenkay Agencies, 1971], p. 14). In spite of populartraditionsto the contrary,the Kama Sutralikely dates from the tenth century C.E. (personal communication from KennethZysk, New York, April 1997). See TA 29.126, 229; Hathayoga Pradipika 3.100, 102; Siva Sarhhita4.1-5; Lillian Silburn, Kundalini, Energy of the Depths, trans. Jacques Gontier (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 1988), pp. 189-92; and E. Valentine Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person in the Tamil Way(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 163-72.

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In the early Kaula, however, it is not only from "ear to and humans."68 that the gnosis ear" but also from "mouth to mouth" (vaktradvaktram)69 is transmitted, and there can be no doubt that the mouths in question are the male and female sexual orifices. A numberof early tantricsources further support this reading, as do iconographic representationsof rajapdna from the four corners of the Indian subcontinent.In tantric worship
of the vulva (yonipujd),70

"Clan Sacrifice" (kulayaga),71and especially tantric initiation, we find repeateddescriptionsof the transmissionof sexual fluids from the mouths (oral and vulval) of a Yogini into the mouth of a male practitioner. In sculptural representations of the worship of the vulva, which are frequent in this period, we see male practitioners crouching beneath the vulva of a female figure, in order to catch her sexual or menstrual fluids in their mouths, in the practice called "drinking female discharge."72 In addition, the most powerful yantras were those drawn with the "ink" of this female discharge.73In this role, the Yogini serves as a conduit, through initiation and ritual, for the transmission of the clan or lineage essence, which uninitiated males intrinsically lack: there is a literal fluid flow from the "mouth" of Siva-Bhairava to that of the Goddess (who, even in her role as transmitter of mantras in high Hindu Tantra, is called bhinnayoni, "she whose vulva is open"), from her to a guru and/ or a Yogini, and thence to a male Siddha initiate. This is stated explicitly in Jayaratha'scommentary to TA 1.13. Quoting an unidentified source which states that "gnosis is to be cast into a woman's mouth and then taken out of her mouth,"he goes on to say that in the kulaprakriya,the Clan Ritual, the disciple receives the gnosis from the lineage (amndya), via the mouth of the Diti, and by means of the unified emission (samaskandataya) of the guru and the Duti. What is being described here is the dynamic of the lower end of the flow chart of the Kaula gnosis, in the form of the clan fluid (kuladravya) emitted by the guru and his consort in sexual intercourse and drunk by the initiate. It is this that makes the latter a member of the clan, of the family of Siva,
68 YH 1.3 (karndt karnopadesa sampraptam).In his commentary,Amrtinanda stipulates that this transmission passes divaysiddhamdnavakramena (in Padoux, trans. [n. 11 above], pp. 99, 101). 69 KJnN 18.22c; TA 29.125b (vaktradvaktrastham). For other references, see David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditionsin Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 255-56. 70 See The Yonitantra,ed. Schoterman (n. 4 above), pp. 18-21 and passim. 71 Gavin Flood, Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Saivism (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1993), pp. 283-301. 72 Donaldson (n. 55 above), p. 150 and passim. Kumari-pujaoccurredduringthe maiden's menses; see RamendraNath Nandi, Religious Institutions and Cults in the Deccan (c. A.D. 600-A.D. 1000) (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973), p. 125. 73 Donaldson, p. 156, n. 7.

the so-called Clan Ritual (kulaprakriyd), the

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the Goddess, and the Yoginis, Diutis and Siddha teachers through whom that clan fluid flows.74 As if to emphasize her transmissive role, the Yogini is termed, precisely, the Duti, the female "Messenger."75 At no time do these sources ever describe the Messenger as speaking, so the question is, What is the Messenger transmitting?76 When Marshall McLuhan stated that "the medium is the message," he was referring to television and other technologies. When the Kaulas made essentially the same statement through the use of the term Duti, their medium/message was, instead, sexual fluid. That this is the case is made explicit as well in the term employed for the fluid messages that flow through the genealogical flow charts of these tantric clans. As we have seen, this is referred to by a number of kulamrta (clan nectar), kuladravya (clan fluid), yoninames-including tattva (vulva essence), and sadbhava-and is identified, in a multitude of sources, with the Yoginis' female discharge, either her menstrual blood or sexual emission.77 In worship, initiation, and ritual practices involving the transmission of the clan essence from the Absolute to male practitioners through the conduit of the upper and lower mouths of the Goddess and the Yoginis or Duitis, it was this fluid essence, which manifested in the form of sexual fluids, that made these practitioners part of a clan or family (kula). It was only later that this concrete flow of information was sublimated or semanticized into the phosphorescing drops of light or consciousness in high Hindu Tantra. In the earlier Kaula, the fluid medium itself was the message that once internalized, transformed the very being of the male practitioner, injecting him with the fluid stuff of the divine, transmitted through the Yoginis, in whom it naturally flowed.
74 The prototype is a divine one (Sanderson, "Saivism and the TantricTradition"[n. 2 above], p. 681): "The basic Kaulapantheonconsists of the Lord and/orGoddess of the Kula (Kulesvara, Kulesvari) surroundedby the eight Mothers (Brahmi, etc.) with or without Bhairava consorts. Outside this core one worships the four mythical gurus or Perfected Ones (Siddhas) of the tradition(the four Lords of the Ages of the World [Yuganatha]),their consorts (dutis), the offspring of these couples and their dutis. The couple of the present, degenerate age (kalivuga) are Macchanda(the Fisherman),veneratedas the revealer of (avataraka) Kaulism and his consort Konkanf. Of their sons, the twelve 'princes'(rdjaputra), six are non-celibate (adhoretas), and therefore specially revered as qualified (sadhikdra)to transmit the Kaula cult. They are revered as the founders of the six initiatory lineages (ovalli). At the time of consecration, one entered one of these lineages and received a name whose second part indicated this affiliation." 75 On the centrality of the sexual commerce with the Duiti and the consumption and offering of her sexual or menstrual fluids in Kaula practice, see Sanderson, "Meaning in TantricRitual,"pp. 83-86. 76 Miranda Shaw (Passionate Enlightenment: Womenin TantricBuddhism [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994], pp. 140-78, esp. 154-58, 176, and notes) provides detailed discussion of parallel practices, involving Yoginis/Dutis in BuddhistTantra.Shaw, however, imputes greateragency and intentionalityto these female figures than I find in the Hindu material. 77 See Lorenzen (n. 66 above), pp. 89-91: and Donaldson, p. 170.

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With this, I feel I have explained one pole of the bipolar sexual relationship that obtained between male and female participantsin the Kaula transmission of tradition. The female Yogini or Diti, by virtue of the naturalpresence of the clan nectar in her menstrualor sexual emissions, was vital to aspiring male practitionerswho wished to be "inseminated" or "insanguinated"with the liberating fluid clan essence and thereby become members of the clan family (kula). Absorptionof the clan fluid was effected through the drinking of such emissions as described or through the practice of vajroli mudrd, urethralsuction. This model, of initiation and the transmission of gnosis through simulated sexual reproduction,is as old as the Vedas themselves, which state that "the teacher, when he initiates his pupil, places him, like a fetus, inside of his body. And during the three nights [of the initiation], he carries him in his belly."78More than this, as the language of initiation in ritual sources as well as in the epic myth of Kavya Usanas and Kaca make clear,"one does not inheritfrom one's [father];instead one inherits
one's father."79 This reproductive symbolism appears in a great number

of medieval and moder non-Sakta initiation accounts, in which the guru "spits" into the mouth of his disciple to transformhim into "himself,"80 and it may be argued that the terms for the line of guru-disciple succession, parampard, generated from parampara, "proceeding from one to another, as a father to a son," is a conscious reflection of this. What Kaulism does is simply to render such successions or transmissions "biologically correct" through the important imposition of the female Yogini or Duti in this role.
VI. WHY DAKINIS ARE FLIGHTY

By way of conclusion, I wish to raise the question of "why Dakinis are flighty" and describe the second and complementary pole of the bipolar sexual relationship that obtained between male and female participants in the Kaula transmission of tradition. Here, I begin by discussion of the use of the term extraction in the twenty-second chapterof the KJiN: "The [work known] by the name of the "Bringing Forth of the [Kaula] Gnosis" was one million five hundred thousand [verses in length]. This [teaching] is the essence, extracted [samuddhrta] from the midst of that.... This teaching [is found] in every one of the Yoginis' houses in Kamarupa.... The Great Teaching brought down at Moon Island, that which was in the condition of the Fish-Belly ... is sung in Kamakhya."
78

AtharvaVeda 11.5.3; Satapatha Brahmana11.5.4.12. Body, pp. 310-13.

80White, TheAlchemical

79 Paul Mus, Barabudur,2 vols. (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'ExtremeOrient, 1935), 1:12.

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[Sam]ud-dhr is one of three Sanskrit terms that translate as "extraction," the others being ut-krs ("drawupward")and a-krs ("drawtoward," "attract").A passage from the eighth-centuryMalati-Mddhavaof Bhavabhiiti makes use of the root a-krs in a way that directly relates "extraction" by a female figure to her power of flight: "Beholding by the power of resorption [layavasad] the eternal Supreme Spirit in the form of Siva [who], superimposed upon my six members [and] placed in the six cakras [nyasta-sadangacakranihitam], manifests himself in the midst of the heart lotus [hrtpadma-madhyoditam], here I have now come without experiencing any fatigue from my flight [aprapta-patana-srama]by virtue of my extraction of the five nectars [paicdmrt-akarsanad]of people [agatah], [which I have effected] by the gradual filling of the channels [nadinamudyakramena] ."81 on this verse, Jagaddharastates that this female figure's Commenting of is power flight acquired through her extraction (akasagamitvautkarsa-pratipddanat)of the five constituent elements of the human body (sarirasya pancabhutatmakasya).The female figure in question is Kapalakundala("She Who Has Skulls for Earrings"),the consort, the Yogini of a Kapalika named Aghoraganta ("Hell's Bells"); and in this scene, she is flying to a cremationground. Thus we are in the presence of a commonplace of medieval Indian literature,which locates male Kula or Kaula practitionersand Yoginis (or Dakinis) in cremationgrounds. In the case of the latter, they are always there to consume human flesh, a role that extends as far back as literature on goddesses (in the plural) takes us.82These hosts of female figures live on, delight in, and are energized by the consumption of human flesh, and it is through their extraction of the essence of the bodies they eat that they are afforded the power of flight. Yoginis or Dakinis need human flesh in order to fly: this continues to be a commonplace of folk belief. To those who offer human flesh (their own or someone else's), they offer their form of grace. For the unfortunatenoninitiate, becoming "food for the Yoginis" was the end: he was finished. The Yoginis would descend on him and drain him of his blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow, and seed, extracting his essence and leaving behind an empty husk. However, for the Kaula yogin, the male counterpartto the Yogini (also called the vira, the virile consort of the Yogini or siddha, the perfected partnerof the Yogini), one could have it both ways. That is, one could offer one's vital fluids, extracted
81 Malati-Madhava, act 5, verse 2, in Bhavabhuti's Malati-Madhava with the Commentaryof Jagaddhara, ed. and trans. M. R. Kale, reprint of 3d ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,1983), pp. 95-96. 82 Among the hundredsof referencesto this in the medieval literature, the KJhN(11.18) states: "By whatever means, one should always devour one's object of extraction [akrstim]. One should honorthe horde of yoginis with food and [sexual] pleasure."

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by the Yogini through sexual intercourse, and yet survive and, more than this, revel together with this consort in magical flight. This was effected through the numerous Kaula techniques for the intermingling (melaka) and shared enjoyment (bhoga) of sexual fluids. These included the technique of vajroli mudra, in which the male partnerextracted his ownand the Yogini's-sexual essence back from the Yogini through urethral suction; as well as the drinking of the mingled sexual fluids of himself and the Yogini. In both cases, the male partnergained what he was lacking (the kuladravya, the fluid of gnosis naturallypresent in the Yogini), while his partnergained the raw materials necessary for her refinement of the high energy fuel that powered her flight. This is also the reason for the repeated exchange of sexual fluids between partners,from mouth to mouth to mouth to mouth,83that we find in descriptions of the kulaprakriya: it is by this means that both partners "pump each other up" with the vital fluids of neitherbeing catalyzed at the expense of the other. The transformativepower of said fluids is discussed by Jayarathain his commentary on a passage from the TA that delineates the practices to be performed by persons seeking siddhis in the form of bodily stability (pin.dasthairya), that is, a body that is subject to neither aging nor death
(ajaramarapada):84 The best of elixirs is an excellent fluid deposited within one's own body.... [It] is known as "kula."... By simply eating it, a man becomes immortal and praised as "Siva." ... Elsewhere, the man who continuously eats [this fluid] in its mixed form becomes... the darling of the Yoginis.... It is said in all the teachings that the tendency toward non-aging immortality is afforded through the mouth of the Yogini [and that] it is passed back and forth, from mouth to mouth. Here, this means: from the mouth of the Yogini into one's own mouth, then into the mouth of the Sakti, then into one's own mouth, and thence into the offertory bowl.... Having combined the great fluid [maharasa] by passing it from mouth to mouth, one should feed the circle ... of the [female?] deities and [male] virile heros [viras] with it.... Having aroused the duti, he whose [own] desire has [also] been quickened should eat the collected fluid [dravya nicaya] that has come forth [from them], back and forth [with her].85

83 An early account is found in KJnN 18.22: carukambhaksayetprajfiahsamayahinena vigesena siddhibhagyahsam8nyathai/. dapayet/ vaktradvaktram 84 TA29.127b-129a. These passages are discussed in Flood (n. 71 above), pp. 298, 387. 85 Parallel practices from the Buddhist "Highest Yoga Tantra"traditionof the Hevajra Tantraand other sources are describedin detail in StephanBeyer, The BuddhistExperience: Sources and Interpretations(Encino, Calif., 1974), pp. 140-53; David Snellgrove, IndoTibetanBuddhism(Boston: Shambhala,1987), 1:256-64; and Per Kvarne, "On the Concept of Sahajain IndianBuddhistTantricLiterature," Temenos 11 (1975): 88-135.

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This is the body of fluid transaction that forms the core of early "tantric sex." It is this as well that is representedin the elaborate erotic sculptures found on the walls of Hindu temples of Kaula inspiration. Finally, this also explains the unique architecturalplan of the Yogini temples, which date from the same period and are found in the same Vindhya mountain regions of central and eastern India as those in which the Kaula flourished. The Yogini temples are circular and roofless, open to the sky. On the inner walls of these temples are figured voluptuous and terrible images of the (usually) sixty-four Yoginis (sometimes figured with severed human appendages in their hands or mouths; in one case with an emaciated but ithyphallic male standing below them),86 while an ithyphallic image of Bhairavastands at the center of the edifice. This perfectly reproduces the schema of Yogini mandalas, in which the sixty-four Yoginis, arrayedin eight clans, converge on their divine regent Bhairava, who is located at the heart of the diagram. It is also entirely functional vis-h-vis the purpose of the Kaula practice: initiation into the flow chart of the clan lineage, mutual gratification,and the shared power of flight enjoyed by Siddha and Yogini alike. The circular Yogini temples, open to sky, were landing fields and launching pads for Yoginis and their male consorts. In their seventh-to-eleventh-centuryheyday, these forms of Kaula theory and practice were so compelling, as direct paths to gnosis, power, and godhead, that they won the adherence of some of the great royal houses of the period: the Somavarhsis,Chandellas, and Kalacuris,whose kingdoms stretched across the Vindhya range and beyond, from Rajasthan to Assam. It was these royal patrons who constructedmany of the Yogini temples whose unusual architecturalruins dot this swathe of central India, who built the "erotic"temple complexes at such sites as Bhubanesvara and Khajuraho, and who undoubtedly sought out Kula and Kaula specialists for their expertise in both the sacred and secular spheres. These remarkshave carried me far afield from the Srividya practice of the kamakala with which I began this study. But then, that is where I would place its origins-in a temporally or geographically distant locus, in which transactionsin sexual fluids transformeda mundanehumaninto a self-made god by initiating him into a superhumanlineage. The practitioner who meditates on the kamakaldyantra gazes into the vulva of the Goddess, out of which all the phonemes, graphemes, and beings of the pulsating universe emerge, and into which they return.
University of California, Santa Barbara
Vidya Dehejia, Yogini Cult and Temples: A Tantric Tradition (Delhi: National Museum, 1986), p. 63.
86